Chronos supports CA100+ in improving the landmark corporate climate benchmark

CA100+ launches public consultation on the Net Zero Company Benchmark

• Chronos supports CA100+ in improving the landmark corporate climate benchmark

Ella Harvey and Rory Sullivan

Chronos, along with the Transition Pathway Initiative and FTSE Russell, have been supporting Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) to develop proposals to enhance the CA100+ Net Zero Company Benchmark (the Benchmark). The Benchmark assesses over 100 of the world’s largest corporate emitters on the actions they have taken to address climate change and underpins investor engagement with these companies.

The CA100+ initiative is the largest investor-driven initiative focused on driving corporate decarbonisation globally, backed by 700 investors responsible for over $68 trillion in assets under management. CA100+ aims to ensure that the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take the necessary action on climate change, and the Benchmark is used to track and assess progress against this goal. Since its inception in 2017, CA100+ has had wide-ranging influence, demonstrated by a rapidly changing corporate disclosure landscape: as of October 2022, 75% of focus companies have committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner across all or some of their emissions footprint (up from 52% in March 2021) and 53% of focus companies have a decarbonisation strategy in place to reduce their GHG emissions (up from 40% in March 2021).

As CA100+ goes into its second phase, it is improving the Net Zero Company Benchmark to ensure that it continues to drive company ambition and meaningful, effective action on climate change. As a part of this process, CA100+ is now consulting on a revised set of Benchmark indicators. The revised indicators up for consultation reflect investors’ evolving expectations as well as lessons learned from the first phase of the initiative. They include proposals on the role of offsets in meeting corporate net zero targets, how companies are investing in climate solutions, and an indicator tracking historical emissions performance. Once the consultation closes on 11 November 2022, the findings will be analysed and used to inform the new Benchmark. The next round of company assessments are expected to be released in autumn 2023.

Chronos Sustainability has worked with CA100+ on the Net Zero Company Benchmark since its inception. Rory Sullivan (CEO) and Ella Harvey (Manager, Climate Change) have worked with CA100+ and key technical experts at the Transition Pathway Initiative and at FTSE Russell on developing the revised Benchmark indicators up for consultation. In addition, Ella was the Lead Researcher on the data delivery of the Benchmark for the interim update published in March 2022, and Rory has been involved with strategic management of CA100+ data delivery since 2020.

Note: The consultation was launched on Oct 13, 2022 and will remain open to the public until November 11, 2022.